Particle therapy systems and methods are known for treating patients with tumors. In particle therapy, charged particles such as protons or heavy ions are used as the source of radiation. Because of the “Bragg peak” effect, charged particles release most of their energy around the area where they stop. Therefore, by choosing the energy of charged particles, the healthy tissue or critical organs distal to the radiation source with respect to the tumor receives no radiation, and the healthy tissue proximal to the Bragg peak receives a significantly reduced amount of radiation.
To make particle therapy available to a large population, it is necessary to develop an optimal delivery system that requires minimal patient setup and treatment time, and that has the capability to produce conformal dose distributions with a higher degree of precision than is currently available. Conformal dose delivery maximizes the radiotherapy dose to the tumor region while minimizing the dose delivered to the surrounding healthy tissue and spares other critical organs. Current particle therapy systems use static fields, which add to patient treatment times. Such systems also compromise the conformity of the delivered dose such that critical organs or more non-cancerous tissue are exposed to unnecessary radiation of treatment beam. The high cost of particle therapy systems challenge the providers to develop optimal systems that meet the goals of conformal delivery of radiation to target tumors with minimal treatment time.